[wilsonnb3]

The biggest difference between budget and flagship is the camera, which is very important to a lot of people.

There are a lot of people on hacker news (myself included) who hardly ever use their phone cameras and tend to forget that this is such a critical feature to so many people.

My personal reason for using flagship devices is simply because I use my phone an absurd amount. If you're using something for hours every day, marginal speed and quality of life improvements add up.

[phjesusthatguy3]

I'm on a second-hand Oneplus One, and I use it for a TOTP client and Firefox. The camera sucks. It's much worse than the Epson digital camera I bought 18 years ago.

That said, it suits my uses absurdly well. I have no reason to replace it.

[davchana]

Well I used $200 Honor 7 for 3 years, most of the regular non vacation days I didn't carry my Canon Canera, but used Honor phone camera only. Then because of battery degradation, I bought $200 RealMe Pro 2, again using its camera & phone for a year now. Saw an ad for UMIDIGI S3 Pro for $249 with NFC on Amazon, but camera is literally shit, with photos having water drop patches, so returned it.

[hakfoo]

Gotta say, that's been Umidigi's one weak point. I've got a F1 Play which hits most of my buttons-- cavernous battery, Micro-SD and 3.5mm sockets, and USB-C, but the camera has a distinct "We set the focus at one specific point about 2 metres away and nothing else is ever going to be sharp" compromise. I've tried Open Camera to no avail; perhaps it needs some sort of manual aperture control.

[davchana]

Yes, true that. I also used Open Camera too, focus was fine only if I breath in before pressing the shutter. Even then, there were marks on photo like wet water drops on a piece of paper.

[gjash]

I have this Umidigi S3 Pro and it takes great pictures.

[linuxftw]

Cameras are important to most people in the way that shoes are important to most people. You can take perfectly fine photos with budget phones.

In any case, I have a lot of friends with phones much more expensive than mine. Their photos aren't that great.